


The T Team

by Goodluckdetective (scorpiontales)



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Ensemble Cast, Friendship, Gen, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-19
Packaged: 2019-02-04 10:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12769200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scorpiontales/pseuds/Goodluckdetective
Summary: Tucker has a plan to ruin the Red's day.Tex has nothing better to do.Or an unlikely friendship.





	The T Team

**Author's Note:**

> This is my RVB Reverse Big Bang. I wrote based off Cobaltqueen's art which you can find here (http://cobaltqueen.tumblr.com/post/167668756329/this-is-my-entry-for-the-reverse-big-bang-and-it) and is embeded in the piece itself. Enjoy!

The thing was, Tex didn’t hate Tucker.

She didn’t like him either, to be clear. She didn’t like most people. In fact, the amount of people she did like could probably be counted on one hand and most of those same people were dead. 

But she didn’t hate Tucker either. Because if she did, Tucker would be dead. So Tucker fell into the category of disliked but tolerated. She’d still stab him for five bucks, but it wouldn’t be anywhere vital. 

He might fall into the hate category if he kept jabbering at her though.

“Why’d you date a loser like Church anyway?”

They were on the top of Blue base, which was a place Tex liked to avoid unless she wanted to be bored or irritated to death. The only reason she was on top of it now was because Caboose said something about a new guy in grey armor. She was pretty sure it wasn’t Wyoming, he had no reason to fuck with Sim troopers other than entertainment, but it wouldn’t hurt to be cautious. Tucker was up there as well, though his reason was far less important than Tex’s. Caboose had burnt toast in the base again, stinking up the entire place and thus forcing Tucker’s immediate retreat. 

“I can’t believe that fucker put anchovies in the goddamn toaster,” Tucker said an hour ago when he plopped next to her by the edge of the roof. Tex could believe it; Caboose had suffered massive brain damage.It was understandable that he had trouble remembering the particulars of what exactly to put in the toaster.

(She felt a little bad about the brain damage, considering her own part in it. But only a little. Most of the damage was already done by the time she arrived to see Church unknowingly fry Caboose’s neurons.) 

“I never dated Church.”

“He says you did.”

“He thinks we did. We didn’t.” It wasn’t a lie. All she was doing was leaving out the most important parts. 

Tucker began talking again but Tex tuned him out. She tried to pick out any strangers in the canyon, anything that might be considered dangerous. The closest dangerous thing she managed to find was Donut driving the warthog.

“Wanna prank the Reds?”

Tex turned her head to Tucker, bothering to pay attention to his words for the first time in minutes. “What?”   
Tucker kept looking across the canyon. There wasn’t much activity going on over there besides the continuous watch of dumb (Grif) and dumber (Simmons).  “The Reds. Wanna fuck with them?”

“Why?” 

Tucker shrugged. “Because Caboose stunk up the base with burnt fish smell, Church is still being a little bitch and we got nothing else to do.”

He wasn’t wrong, though Tex would argue that Church was and always would be a little bitch. She stared across the canyon, zooming in her mechanical vision to get a better look. The dull grey building with a lone red flag looked as boring as ever. “Hmph.”

There was a second of silence before Tucker spoke again. His tone changed this time, playful in nature. Which sounded the same as flirty. The only reason Tex could tell the difference by now was that Tucker knew better to hit on her if he wanted to keep his bones in place. “Also I heard from Donut Sarge’s scream can go falsetto if you really freak him out and I wanna see if that’s bullshit.”

Tex could picture it as soon as Tucker said it. Sarge, without his helmet, hands pressed to his cheeks, screeching high enough to heard across the canyon. A full “white chick in a horror movie” scream. Except this “white chick” would be a 50 year old man with enough facial hair to smother a person if he put his mind to it. It sounded too good to be true.

“Falsetto? Sarge?”

Even with his helmet on, Tex could picture the grin that spread across his face. “High enough to break fucking glass.”

That did it. Tex was in. She put her gun back in her holster and turned to Tucker fully.

“What did you have in mind?”

* * *

  
It was a really dumb plan.

Tex decided to help him with it anyway. Because if Tucker managed to pull this off, honestly managed it, it may end up being one of the best sights she’ll have seen in a very long time.

They go back into Blue base for the preparations. Tucker complained about the smell the entire time and Tex found herself thankful she couldn’t really smell anything with her body now. It takes some wrangling to find what they need, a few solid minutes of digging through Florida’s old room to dig up the right chemicals. 

(Those few solid minutes of digging Tex did herself. Tucker might be more aware about some ugly truths of Freelancer than the rest of his friends, but Tex wasn’t going to risk Florida's old shit telling Tucker more than he needed to know. So Florida's hidden passageway to the cavern underground in his closet, his knife collection under his mattress and the brain scans of the poor asshole they put Church into stayed hidden.)

With their materials gathered, Tucker took over. They went into the now scorched kitchen and went to work. Tex helped Tucker pour his necessary ingredients into  a pitiful excuse for a thermos and watched as Tucker stirred the mix together. After that was done, came the testing process. It took them three batches of deciding exactly what ratios they needed before they got the result they were looking for. Satisfied, they screwed the lid back onto the thermos. Tucker placed it into his armor’s storage container and put his hands on his hips.

The easy part was done. Now came the part where things got complicated; getting into Red base and back out again.

“This wouldn’t have to be complicated if you just let me do it,” Tex muttered as they stared down at the Red base below. There wasn’t any activity outside at the moment, a rarity for Red team. It was perfect for their plan having a maximum impact, but it made sneaking in much, much harder.

“If I let you do it, you’ll just beat them up and that ruins the element of surprise.”

“I can be stealthy!” 

“Without your invisibility modifier? The jury is out.”

“I’m a secret agent!” That she was, though Tucker had a point about her ruining their element of surprise. If he let her do it, she would likely give into the temptation to take the fast route and cut to punching as the fastest way through the base. 

“And I’m the guy holding the key to this plan,” Tucker said, banging on the section of his armor that hid the thermos. “So I’m coming with, secret or not.”

Tex glared at the hatch to Tucker’s armor’s storage container. “I could just knock you out and do it myself.” It would be so easy, too. One clock to the face and he would be out cold. Tex would reap the benefits of his stupid plan without having to endure a single “that’s what she said” joke. 

“You could. But then you’d be punching me with no pay and is that really a precedent you want to set for future clients?”

Tex tilted her head, then shrugged. “Fair enough.” She gestured to Red base with one hand. “Lead the way, Capitan Asshole.”

“That’s Cardinal asshole to you, actually,” Tucker said before taking off towards the Red team base. There was no one standing guard outside at the moment, a rarity for Red team, and avoiding the cameras were easy enough as Grif had rigged a blind spot in each of them for where he could sneak and nap without being detected. Lopez was nearest to the door when they stepped inside, sitting in a chair in the security office. He looked at them as they walked in, then back at the televisions on the screen. When Tex took a closer look at what they were playing, it appeared to be television.

“Don’t worry about him,” Tucker said, moving along. “He isn’t going to raise any alarm if it means interrupting his soap operas.”

Tex followed Tucker, though her gaze did linger on the security televisions. She couldn’t make out what exact program was playing, most were on commercial, but Lopez looked to be watching multiple shows at once. “Don’t you mean telenovelas?”

Tucker made a noise that sounded like disgust. “Don’t be racist; he likes Martian soaps. And we gotta keep moving.”

That they did. They passed a large empty space where Donut looked to be doing something akin to workout classes you often saw middle age woman do. He was dressed in bright pink booty shorts and a tank top. Simmons was in the armory when they passed him, polishing his armor plating. He was spending too much time on it in Tex’s opinion; he would start ruining the paint if he kept applying any more polish.

As they got closer to Sarge’s quarters they tried to move quieter, noticing the man had his door open. She could hear Sarge’s voice come from inside the room. Either he was talking to himself again, or lecturing Grif as per usual. As they got across from his door they hung to the wall, where the poor lighting of Red team’s hallways (Grif never changed the lightbulbs he was assigned to repair) kept them relatively disguised. They would have made it past with no delay if Tucker hadn’t bothered to look inside Sarge’s room as came to an abrupt halt.

“Holy fuck,” Tucker whispered.

Tex looked over, ready to admonish him for stopping when she saw it. Sarge was wearing a newspaper hat sideways, hands on his hips. Tex watched as he cleared his throat. What he proceed to say was perhaps the strangest thing Tex had ever heard the man say. Which was saying something.

“Now prisoner 24601. Your time is up and your parole's begun. You know what that means?” Sarge said, no sung. Sung in an poorly practiced accent that sounded like a mix of russian, deep southern and some sort of alien attempting to impersonate a human speaking. Tex watched, bewildered, as he took off his newspaper hat and turned on his heels. He knelt down opposite of where he’d been previous standing and held up his hands like they were bound together. The next sentence he said was also sung, but it was in a voice that sounded like like a parody of a Brooklyn accent.

“Yes. It means I’m free.”

As soon as Sarge said that, he got up again, turning back so he was standing in his original position. He put back on his newspaper hat and took upon the first accent he’d tried. 

“No! Follow to the letter your itinerary. This badge of shame you'll show until you die. It warns you're a dangerous man.”

“Oh my god,” Tucker said, sounded delighted. “Please tell me you have a recording function in your helmet.”

“What?”

“We need to film this. Church will never fucking believe me otherwise.”

Tex watched as Sarge continued to sing to himself in the mirror. He was switching constantly now, taking on tones that sounded like a wide array of different accents and personas. When he started doing a back and forth song between himself and what seemed to be a mob of people given how fast he was flitting about, Tex decided she’d seen enough. 

“We’re going,” Tex said, grabbing Tucker by the arm and yanking him to the side. Tucker yelped as she did so. Thankfully Sarge was so deep in his own musical antics that he didn’t notice Tucker’s outburst.

They crept through the Red team mess next. The cabinets to the rations were open and Tex wasn’t surprised when she saw Grif lying asleep at the bottom of it. He didn’t look to have eaten many of the contexts contained inside; no he just looked like he was getting in a long needed nap where no one would find him for a solid period of time. Tucker snickered as they passed and Grif, deep in a slumber that could probably be considered a coma didn’t stir. Tex watched as Tucker krept open to the cabinets and retrieved a sleeve of oreos from above Grif’s sleeping form. He tucked them under his arm.

“Future leverage,” he whispered. And well, why should Tex argue with that?

The rest of Red base was easy to navigate. They found the fire sprinkler system easy enough when they made it to the bowels of the base maintenance room. It was pretty well cleaned and Tex could see large barrels of what smelled like moonshine in the corner.

“Donut’s secret side business. Apparently it can peel paint and make you able to taste philosophy.” 

Tex decided it was best not to question that remark further and walked over to the fire system. She turned open the hatch with a smooth motion and looked inside. The water to the sprinkler system was at regulation amounts, a rarity for Sim trooper bases. Like this place was operating at Freelancer levels of quality rather than some backwoods operation to test canon fodder. 

It clicked in her head then, why this entire place threw her off. Blue base didn’t look anything like Freelancer, not with the disaster that Tucker, Church and Caboose had made of it after Florida's death. The Freelancer standard walls were covered over with blue paint and Caboose’s drawings, the floor was dented and chipped with holes from Church practicing his shooting inside. Even the piping that snaked across the ceiling was almost unrecognizable from it’s Freelancer roots given how Tucker liked to dry his boxers over the lower pipes.

Blue base didn’t look like a Freelancer operation because it was lived in. Homey. Even with all the reminders of who built it, of who operated it in the shadows, it didn’t seem like Freelancer’s because the people who resided in it were so different than the cold strangers she’d once shared space with all those years ago.

Red base was similar to Blue’s in the sense it was well lived in, but Sarge still kept to some regulation. Which meant no matter how many of Donut’s colones lingered in the hall or how many foot prints from Grif’s dirty boots scattered the floor, Tex could sometimes look just the wrong way and see a prison she escaped instead of a small sim trooper base in the middle of nowhere.

“Tex?” Tucker said, tapping her on the shoulder. “Tex, is something wrong with the sprinkler system or something?”

Looking back on it later, she would have no explanation to why she decided to tell Tucker what she did. Maybe it was the shared camaraderie from sneaking past the Reds or maybe it was the fact that keeping this shit to herself was far more exhausting than she made it out to be. Either way, in that tiny cramped hallway of Red base, she decided to say something out loud that she never said to anyone before. Even herself.

“I’m an A.I.”

She wasn’t sure what she expected. Ever since she’d found out the truth about herself, she’d found the universe almost impossible to predict, especially people. She was a good at predicting how people fought, sure, but when it came to foreseeing the choices people would make, she often found herself at a loss. Part of her wondered if she was so bad at it because she wasn’t actually a person herself, just a copy.

Another part of her, a part she liked to ignore, argued that couldn’t be the case. Because if it was an issue of A.I logic compared to humans, she should have foreseen Delta wanting to stay with York as soon as it was clear the Freelancer wouldn’t make it.

So when she tells Tucker this, she doesn’t prepare for any specific reaction. She just stands back and watches his helmet, wishing she could see his face behind his visor. He’s quiet for a small moment before he pumps his fist in a gesture of victory.

“Fucking knew it! I fucking knew it! Ghosts my ass.” Tucker turned to Tex and grabbed her shoulders. “Do you know how much you’ve made my day?”

“No and I don’t care.” She batted his hands off her shoulders with some force. Tucker rubbed his wrists after, muttering about “overkill.”

“Well you should, cus Caboose owes me his best rations now. He thought you were a lion bear ghost.”

“A lion bear?”

“He says they exist on the Moon. Scary thing is I don’t think he was joking.” 

Tex tried to picture a lion bear. It didn’t seem all that impressive; just two furry things stuck together. Nothing she couldn’t punch into submission. 

“Is Church an A.I too?” 

Tex froze. This time she was the one grabbing Tucker’s shoulders, but with enough force to hurt. She pushed him back against the Red base’s wall and the echo that resounded through the corridor was loud enough to attract attention if the Reds had any perceptive skills whatsoever. 

“How did you know-”

“Woah, woah.” Given the resistance to her hold, Tex could guess Tucker was trying to raise his arms in a position of surrender. “I figured it out, okay. Just like you.”

“Just figured it out?”   
  


“You guys died, but you were floating around. It had to be A.I or ghosts. And we all know what happens to the black guy in the horror movie; A.I was the best outcome for everyone involved here.”

Best outcome? Tex begged to differ. Ghosts might be the horror movie staple, but A.I could be just as frightening. Tex knew that well enough first hand.

Honestly, she was much a ghost as she was an A.I. The only difference was that she wasn’t the monster in her own horror story. 

“You tell him what you think? Church?”

“Nah. He’s pretty set on the ghost thing. I didn’t want to blow his identity crisis or some shit. He’s super annoying when he’s bitchy.”

“Keep it that way.”

“You saying he doesn’t know.”

“I’m saying it’s none of your fucking business.” She let go of Tucker and he slumped down and inch on the wall. 

“Fine, fine.” Tucker looked to his left. Tex followed his gaze, spotting what he was looking at; the emergency fire system’s water supply. They’d found it. After all this sneaking around this base, they finally found it.

“Bingo,” Tucker said. He crept forward and opened the hatch. It wasn’t even locked. Tex wasn’t surprised; Freelancer liked to spend as little money on their Sim Trooper bases as possible. If any of them were up to military building code, it was probably an accident. Tucker reached into his armor hatch and pulled out the thermos contained with the liquid they’d spent the morning working on. “You ready to blow this joint in style?”

“You bet.” 

With that, Tucker drained the contents of the thermos into the emergency fire system’s water supply. He closed the hatch as it began to dissolve into the water. They waited ten minutes for the liquid to do it’s job. With the main part of their plan complete, they took their time sneaking back out through the base, past Lopez and his shows, past Simmons and his frantic armor polishing, past Grif sleeping in the kitchen, past Donut and his jazzercise routine and finally, past Sarge and his full one person reenactment of Les Mis. When they made it to the exit, they stopped, stalling in front of the final part of the plan. The fire alarm.

Tucker took a step back from the lever and gestured his hands at it. “Would you like to do the honors?”

“Hell yes,” Tex said. She grasped the lever and then with forced it down. The strength she added even bent it a little. They were already running out of the base when the alarms began to ring. By the time the sprinklers started going off, they were at their planned viewing spot. 

That was fine. Their crux of this plan was the sprinklers after all. Throwing the Red’s fire alarm wasn’t a decent prank; the Reds set it off themselves so often it could be categorized as a daily occurrence. No, what mattered was the sprinklers. And what was now coming out of them.

Simmons ran out first, dutiful to protocol as always. There was no sign of their hard work on his armor, due to his adherence to evacuation times. But when Donut came out next, still in booty shorts and a tank top, the work of the morning was plain all over his entire frame.

He was blue. Bright, Church tinted, blue. Not entirely, he wasn’t under the sprinklers long enough to get fully drenched, but enough that is was noticeable even from their distance away. Blue spots littered his pink tank top and shorts, droplets of blue water ran down his arms and forehead. Even his blonde dyed hair was tinted periwinkle.

“God bless homemade food dye,” Tucker said, hands clasped together. Tex had to agree. The amount of time it took them to make up enough to dye the Red’s water supply was proving entirely worth it.

“This is my favorite shirt!” Donut said. He spit into his hand and began rubbing it into one of the blue spots. “This is something not even spit can fix!”

Tex wasn’t sure what was better; Simmons groan at Donut’s comment or the matter of fact way Lopez walked out of the base still holding his television. The robot promptly placed it in on the lawn and without further ado sat down across from it. He payed no attention to the base as the sirens still rang.

Sarge came out next and God, that was the highlight. His entire armor was covered in droplets of blue water. Grif followed out behind him, his armor covered in the dye as well. Unlike his leader, he more meandered out of the base than walked. When Sarge and Grif made it to the rest of the Red’s, Grif flopped down on the grass next to Lopez.

“Grif! Lopez! Now is not the time for your stories! We’re under attack! The water itself has betrayed us for the Blue forces!” Sarge grabbed his shotgun and cocked it, the sound echoing even from the distance Tex and Tucker watched at. “This calls for drastic measures. “Donut!” Sarge said, pointing to the soldier in bright pink armor. “Get your pistol. We need to shoot ever traitorous sprinkler in the base! Simmons! Find out where our water supply comes from! We gotta follow this to the source. Lopez, get the warthog ready! And Grif-Wake up for gods sake, we’re being attacked by nature itself!”

It was a good thing they were a distance away, or Tex and Tucker would have entirely blown their cover from how loud they laughed.

 

* * *

Hours later, Tex and Tucker were back on top of Blue base. Only this time, they didn’t stand in awkward silence. This time they were straining to keep from chuckling every few seconds.

“War against the water,” Tucker said, voice tinged with amusement. “What are they gonna do, shoot a lake?”

“They might try. I wouldn’t put it past them.” Tex could see it now; Sarge marching out his band of idiots to shoot at the nearest pond. She’d have to follow and bring popcorn. Even if she couldn’t eat it, such an occasion required a snack to go with it.

“You think he’ll declare victory when he’s out of a clip or when the water manages to learn how to wave a white flag?”

“I’d put money of him declaring victory as soon as Grif decides to dye it red to get this whole thing over with.”

Tucker laughed at that, loud enough to be heard from the floor below. As he did that, Tex looked around, scanning for threats. It was habit at this point honestly. Or perhaps it was just her programing. As per usual, she found nothing of note. Well, nothing of note that was dangerous. 

Church caught her eye. He always did, despite her best efforts to keep from staring him down. He was yelling off on a cliff edge, hands in the air, front plate of armor somewhat burnt from Caboose’s morning toaster adventures. Tex was sure he was still ranting about said adventure. Still bitter, still caught up in the past. His sniper rifle hung off his back. 

The image of that rifle was enough to suck Tex into a memory. A small computer generated room, an A.I who didn’t know who she was, who didn’t know who he was. Who still didn’t. The rifle that hung in his hands, like he wanted to protect himself but didn’t know how.

Tex thought about Church’s aim. About how he could shoot so wide when his fragments could calculate a shot down to the millimeter. We’re they able to do it because they knew what they truly were? Or was it because that was something else they’d stripped from Alpha in order to build their perfect group of soldiers?

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know.

“He doesn’t know,” Tex said at that thought before she could even think it through.

Tucker turned his head, his braids falling in front of his face with the movement. He takes only a moment to brush them back.“What?”

“Church. He doesn’t know about the A.I thing. About either of us.”

It’s odd, talking to someone with their helmet off. Tex has spent so much of her existance reading people’s emotions through nothing but twitches and vocal tone that adding in actual human expressions to go off of only serves to throw her off rather than to provide her any guidance. The expression that crosses Tucker’s face is something she can’t place, an odd mix of compilation and blankness. The  most his face changes is the narrowing of his eyes. “Huh.”

“Huh.” Tex can’t keep the disbelief out of her voice. “That’s it?”

Tucker tilts his head to one side, shrugging with the opposite shoulder. “I mean, yeah? I was just thinking it was fucked up, that’s all. That he doesn’t know.”

That was an understatement. Tex could remember the tone in Alpha’s voice when she saw him last, when she saw him last as himself. The sheer exhausted tone to it, how stretched thin he seemed in every way. Then the first time she saw him as “Church” the utter lack of true recognition in his tone, the personalty that appeared to be the only bits of Alpha that Freelancer didn’t take stitched together. Regret, exhaustion and bitterness. “You don’t know half of it.”

Tucker was quiet a moment before he spoke again. “Is there a reason he doesn’t know? Like was he made to think he was a real boy or some shit?”

“No.” That was Tex, not Church. She was the robot forced into a human suit and told that suit had always been her own skin. Church was a different story.

Tucker’s brow furrowed. “So, is he like in denial then? Like hardcore forced himself to forget denial? Cus I didn’t think A.I could manage that level of human repression.”

“That’s racist.”

Tucker scowled at her. “No it isn’t. It’s roboticist or something like that. I don’t know the correct terms for like robot discrimination.” He shook his head, his braids hitting against his shoulder plating. Tex wondered how long he’d been in this canyon, that he’d managed to grow out his hair from the regulation buzz he’d been forced to get into hair this length. Too long, probably.

“So is it the made himself forget denial?” Tucker asked, staring at the Blue Base below. Church was still outside it, ranting and complaining about a kitchen accident that was now over six hours ago. Tex placed her hands behind her and leaned back. She felt terribly tired all of the sudden. Which was honestly ridiculous since she no longer needed sleep.

“Maybe? I’m not sure.” Tex could feel herself close her eyes, but she knew she had no eyes to speak of under her visor. All that truly laid there was wiring. What she felt now was only a memory, phantom pain of a sort. “It’s complicated.”

The next sentence Tucker said was spoken with an entirely straight face.

“That’s what she said.”

All respect Tex had gained for Tucker over the last few hours vanished. “Really?”

A shit eating grin passed Tucker’s face. “I can’t change who I am.”

“You should try; you’re terrible.”

The shit eating grin grew wider. “That’s what she-”

Tex lifted up one of her hands and pointed it as Tucker. “Say that shit again, I will break your hands so you won’t be able to masturbate for a fucking month.” She clenched her hand into a fist, crunching the plating a little to make her point.

Tucker flinched just a fraction then held up his hands. “Fine, fine, no more jokes.” He lowered his hands again, resting them at his sides. He looked down at Church milling about below, then at Tex, then back at Church, then back at Tex. When he spoke next, Tex could read the expression on his face; open confusion. 

“Why are you telling me this?”

Tex thought about that for a moment. Why was she telling him this? Why was she bothering to let Tucker in on a secret that so few people alive now knew? The answer came to her sooner than she expected. Two faces, one with piercing green eyes hidden behind glasses, the other a blank expression with a monotone voice that she now associated with fear rather than calm.

“Because someone other than them should know,” Tex said.  

Tucker didn’t ask anymore questions after that.

Years later, in a small facility surrounded by suits of black armor, Tucker would wonder why he didn’t. 


End file.
